Categories: Blog Central

Ch-ch-changes

An all-new commenting system is coming to Macleans.ca

by Philippe Gohier on Monday, May 9, 2011 12:11pm - 247 Comments

We’re a restless bunch over here at Macleans.ca. To prove it, we’ve been working on some tweaks here and there, the most noticeable of which will go live today.

Some time in the next few hours, we’ll be switching our comment system over to Disqus. What that means for you, dear reader/commenter, is mainly three things:

(1) Most of the old comments have been imported (the really old ones are coming soon), but your IntenseDebate profiles will not be transferred over to the new system. So all those reputation points you’ve been collecting/squandering over the years will be gone for good. Sorry; we just couldn’t make it happen.

(2) From now on, you’ll have to register before you can comment on articles. You don’t necessarily have to register with Disqus—you can also log in with Twitter or Facebook—but the days of completely anonymous guest comments are over.

(3) Comments will now be relegated to a separate page. You’ll have to click a link at the bottom of an article to see the comments attached to it. The good news is that this should improve load times quite a bit for articles that have a ton of comments.

This is all part of a broader effort to give the site a bit of a spring cleaning, so you’ll be seeing some other, more subtle, changes as well. And since there’s no such thing as a bug-free website, you may notice some glitches as we work out the kinks. Please be patient with us as we sort everything out. In the meantime, feel free to add your comments and suggestions to this post. We’ll be keeping an eye on it.

Hope y’all like what we’ve got in store.

Tags: Comments, disqus, housekeeping, spring cleaning

More by Philippe Gohier

Anonymous

This lack of nesting might really cut off conversations, imho.

If myl makes a comment, I can reply to it. If he likes, CR can then reply to my comment. And that, apparently, is it. If WDM wants to respond to CR’s comment, he has to reply to MY comment. If Emily wants to reply to WDM’s comment then SHE has to reply to my comment. At that point, everyone’s replying either to myl’s original
comment, or to my reply, all the way down…

I know there’s the whole @ option, but I still think it’s going to get confusing.

modster99

I agree. It was nice to be able to directly reply to the comment you wanted to. Can’t see why they have the system they have now.
modster99

I agree. It was nice to be able to directly reply to the comment you wanted to. Can’t see why they have the system they have now.

Phil King

Hey, wait a minute! I can’t express my hatred anymore! Where’s the “don’t like” aka “you suck” button?

How am I going to get my cathardic release now? Sigh. LOL
Noob Goldberg

This seems like a fairly drastic change to simply give us twitter access to comment threads. I miss the default hidden threads (limiting the depth of the initial comment thread) and the fact that comments were inline with the article itself.

I sure hope the back-end features make this all worth it for you guys.
modster99

Well, the ‘link to comment’ appears to not work. What else?

Anonymous

Could you be more specific? Is this within Disqus? or on the site?

modster99

if you get an email that someone replied to your post, and follow the link that comes with it, it only takes you to the story, not the reply. ID used to take us right to the comment. Saves a lot of time, searching for comments.
modster99

if you get an email that someone replied to your post, and follow the link that comes with it, it only takes you to the story, not the reply. ID used to take us right to the comment. Saves a lot of time, searching for comments.

Anonymous

ID used to take us right to the comment when it worked. I had only about a 50% success rate with that feature.
Anonymous

ID used to take us right to the comment when it worked. I had only about a 50% success rate with that feature.

Anonymous

Could you be more specific? Is this within Disqus? or on the site?

Anonymous

Here goes nothing! This is a test…
Anonymous

Here goes nothing! This is a test…
modster99

Anything with Emily in it would be great. :)
modster99

Anything with Emily in it would be great. :)
modster99

Count me in as interested.
modster99

Count me in as interested.
Anonymous

Well, someone beat me to my old user name. Funny no one seemed to want it when I wasn’t registered.
http://twitter.com/frogrove frobisher grove

Something seems suspiciously new here. But, hey, anything once. Huzzah!
The Knave

We are not amused.

The Knave

To elaborate, I do not like having to switch back and forth between comments and the article.
The Knave

To elaborate, I do not like having to switch back and forth between comments and the article.

The Knave

We are not amused.
Anonymous

I didn’t notice this post before. The new commenting system has a few problems. You can no longer read the body of a story while commenting on it, which makes quoting interesting passages difficult. The look and feel is inferior to the previous system. OTOH, getting rid of the thumbs is probably a good idea, as certain people took great pleasure in trolling for thumbs-downs. That change will (hopefully) cut down on the number of trolls. Threading seems to be more problematic in this system, too.

If you are to change only one thing back, please change the layout so that the comments appear on the same page as the original post/article spawning the comments.
Anonymous

Mmmm, not hating new format but not loving it either … care not about the reputation thing … separate page for comments – harder to refer back to article, but can always open in separate tab on Chrome … but, do hate and may just be me – cannot see where and how to thumbs down a comment (v. a particular page).
Anonymous

I don’t agree with the changes but we must look at both sides of the case and I think they are fair.
Anonymous

I don’t agree with the changes but we must look at both sides of the case and I think they are fair.
Anonymous

Thanks but I disagree
Anonymous

Thanks but I disagree
Mike514

Question: If I sign in with Facebook, will my comments on Macleans be advertised to all my friends on Facebook?

It's not that I mind, but if I comment many times on Macleans, I don't want my friends to get several notifications saying "Michael has commented on such-and-such article at Macleans."
ColdStanding

Grrrr.
Iccyh

Every so often, I think that forums rather than just comments would be nice. That would allow commenters to start discussions among themselves, and most forums I've seen have some pretty solid search, history, and reputation functions. It'd be completely understandable if that isn't a direction that is desired, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
evenflow

You guys have one of the best comment sections around. Don't change it please!
Philippe Gohier

That'll be up to you. There's an option for it in the profile settings.
Philippe Gohier

It's not a bad idea. As a matter of fact, many moons ago, we had forums on here. They were pretty terrible, though, and fell into disrepair. But if there's legitimate interest in reviving them, we'd consider it.
Philippe Gohier

Cheer up. It's for the best.
Iccyh

Count me as interested. I suspect there are enough regular commenters around here that forums would be workable.

How long ago was that, out of curiosity?
ColdStanding

I am already attempting to set up a new disqus profile. We'll see how it goes.
Mark

Best comment section, and, on balance, the best discussions.

I don't like the whole "click on a link to go to the comments. I quite like this set up.
Philippe Gohier

I think they were finally put out of their misery 3-4 years ago.
OriginalEmily1

Okay, done. Off and running.
http://onelinecritic.wordpress.com/ DirtyOldTown

I seem to be having problems too. It keeps bouncing me back to the home page when I click 'create a commenter account.' Hmmm….
ColdStanding

Well, I think that I have managed to migrate over. Most of my comments have come too. I'm sure everybody will be relieved to here that this valuable body of work has not been lost.*

*A joke!!
Claudia Lemire

Well, I for one welcome it, change is always good!
http://onelinecritic.wordpress.com/ DirtyOldTown

It seems to be working now, I switched browsers. It didn't like firefox for some reason. Maybe the pop ups were blocked. Anyway, relieved I can now contine my important contributions to the intellectual life of our nation.*

*Also a joke!!
Thwim

Indeed. The forums were an interesting experiment. The software running them was always a bit flaky, and they were separate from the articles in that you had to go into a specific forums section — meaning that they got very little traffic even at the best of times.

That said, some of the discussions on them were fairly interesting. Especially with the first CPC budget, in '06.
Thwim

Requiring Registration — Good. Allows users to build up a history, and I assume will come with some more robust user management features.. such as allowing me to choose whose posts I don't want to see.

Putting it on a separate page — Very bad. The problem with too many comments will disappear with this change alone. I predict the problem will rapidly become one of too *few* comments, as people won't bother clicking to see what's been said, meaning they won't be enticed to reply, meaning the section will shrink, which will give even regular users less reason to bother checking, and so on until nobody's bothering to check it at all, with corresponding effects on the views of the accompanying article as well.
SeanStok

I don't know about that. The Maclean's site in general isn't the easiest one to navigate (I don't mean it's bad or anything, guys!), so I expect most comments provided are already the products of fairly motivated individuals. I can't see one extra click being that monumental a hurdle. But I'm often wrong…
DBM

There is no anonymity in Stephen Harper's Canada.
DBM

Also.

Change! Boo!!